Which side are you on boys? Revisiting the history of British coal miners and the strike of 1984/5

The year 2025 marks the fortieth anniversary of the end of the bitter twelve-month miners’ strike of 1984/5. The dominance of coal in British energy production from the 1880s to the 1980s also came to an end in 2024 with the announced closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in the East Midlands. Yet the centrality of coal, miners, their trade unionism and their communities to the nation continues to cast a long shadow over Britain’s twentieth-century history and the political dramas of the present. Post-coal communities and some former miners provided significant support to the cause of Brexit, the referendum of 2016 and the general election of 2019, which saw a number of ‘Red Wall’ seats, in what were once solid Labour constituencies, deliver a significant victory to the Conservative Party. The plight of post-coal localities continues to feature in contemporary political discourse, with a range of parties claiming to represent the concerns of those who have been seemingly marginalised and left behind. In the light of these developments, historians have returned to the British coal industry through major research projects and the publication of a range of books and articles. The renewed interest in coal miners has also found its way into films, television dramas, novels, musicals and photography exhibitions. This article revisits the industry through a critical appraisal of four books that both reinforce and challenge familiar framings of miners, their trade unions and communities, and interpretations of the 1984/5 strike.

Citation

Gildart, K. (2025) Which side are you on boys? Revisiting the history of British coal miners and the strike of 1984/5. English Historical Review, ceaf194, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaf194

Type

Journal article

Language

en

Description

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published by OUP on 10/11/2025, available online: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaf194 The accepted manuscript may differ from the final published version.

ISSN

0013-8266

EISSN

1477-4534

Collections

Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences